quarta-feira, 31 de agosto de 2011

Just before the summer break, a great dinner party!

To celebrate with us, Daniela and Janine came from Barcelona, Kerry and Thomas from Atlanta, Maria José from Braga, André, Madalena and Susana from Lisbon and our newly discovered neighbors, Miguel and Patrícia, who happen to live up the street!

Despite the unusual mild summer, we were greeted with a very pleasant new moon night in the hidden garden.﻿﻿ ﻿

Cascais cake with Hush-Hush Garden's tangerine granita and a glass of Moscatel de Setúbal

By Kerry & Thomas

I’ll never get tired to say what a great privilege this is to be able to welcome and socialize with our guests. Getting to meet so many interesting and different people opens our mind and our hearts. Thanks for sharing these moments with us!

terça-feira, 16 de agosto de 2011

Enchanted Encounters

The will to share with friend and strangers the special garden at Hush-Hush made us start this underground dining experience. Good Portuguese food and wine wrapped in specially selected music and matching decoration seemed the best choice to put this idea into practice.

Suddenly we’re the hosts of an underground restaurant. At first site, a place to enjoy home cooking dishes, paired with good wine and great companion. After some time we feel it’s much more than that... These meetings are an open door, with no reservations, to face ourselves through our guests. It’s a disturbing discover but also absolutely inspiring!

It isn’t always possible to explain the purpose of the ingredients chosen to build a dish. And, honestly, it isn’t important as long as people enjoy what they’re eating and spend a great evening, that’s already a victory.

At Hush-Hush Garden, the purpose is to find the best organic or locally produced ingredients which will help to display the quality of Portuguese cuisine for those who visit us.

This time we head to Setúbal market. One of the best fish markets in Portugal. It also has a fantastic select of great fruits and vegetables (forgot to take pictures…).

I bought figs “Moscatel” to make a salad with smoked Porco Preto ham and wild pine nuts, and got some really fresh shrimps from Algarve to make the Ultramarin shrimp soup.

The heads were cooked with garlic, leeks, tomatoes, potatoes, piri-piri and cinnamon to produce the soup as the bodies were served à la guillo sprinkled with cocoa nibs and fresh piri-piri dices.

The main course was roasted rabbit, seasoned with fresh thyme, rosemary and sliced preserved lemon (from HHG lemon tree) sided by sweet potatoes from Comporta and a mix with zucchini and carrots sautés in garlic and olive oil.

This was a great opportunity to serve two special wines made with organically produced grapes from Casa de Mouraz in Dão region.

For the starters a white wine from 2010 made exclusively with “Encruzado” grapes, a noble grape variety from Dão. To pair the main course, a red wine made with a blend of Touriga Nacional, Alfrocheiro, Tinta Roriz, Jaen and the almost unknown grape variety Água Santa.

Casa de Mouraz wines are produced with total respect to the ancestral cycles of nature and the traditional grape varieties and technics from Dão region. The harmony achieved whilst the wines are produced, mark them with character and charm. Perfect companions to the food we ate!

For dessert, carob cake with tangerine sorbet (made with HHG tangerines) with two different sauces. One a mix of raspberry and redcurrant and other made with wild blackberries picked in Arrábida sierra. The dessert wine was a fabulous and fragrant Moscatel de Setúbal from Venâncio da Costa Lima, gold medal awarded in the most prestige competition for Muscat wines in the world.

Many thanks to our perfect guests who contribute to an unforgettable evening bathed with a dazzling full moon!

quinta-feira, 4 de agosto de 2011

A year ago, when we decided to take the Hush-Hush Garden project ahead, we didn’t expect to meet so many and different persons. Last time we welcomed Ana and her husband Carlos.

They live in Paris where Ana, a Spanish girl, started an underground restaurant with two friends. At Ana’s apartment they produce unique dinner parties where food and artistic performances are the pretext for unforgettable evenings. Can't wait to pay them a visit. It looks amazing!

Being able to share our experiences with these new friends is absolutely fantastic and makes us want to keep up as we realize we’re part of a fantastic new trend which we hope is here to stay.

The underground restaurant movement or guerrilla dinning or whatever name we want to give it, started in south America countries, which the Cuban paladares are the best example.

The entrance to Le Chansonnier and La Guardia in 2001 when we visited La Havana.

The trend soon spread across USA and, during the last few years, became an established urban movement in the UK and other European countries.

We decided to start our hidden kitchen project because we want the richness of the Portuguese local products and Portuguese wines to be appreciated by as many people as possible. Also because we feel so lucky having found our house with it’s lovely garden, that we want to share it with our friends and guests and, at the same time, enjoying good food and good wine.

At Hush-Hush Garden we chose to divulge the wonderful Portuguese cuisine that we try to display with creativity and prepare with the best organic and seasonal ingredients.

About Us

Hush-Hush Garden is the first underground restaurant in Lisbon. Here, we hold private dinner parties and cook for our guests who also get to meet different people while enjoying the pleasures of a great dinner prepared with fresh organic ingredients and Portuguese seasonal delicatessen. Plus, this all goes on in an amazing garden hidden in a Lisbon's vintage house.
Susana is a wine tasting instructor with a passion for traditional cuisine and interior design. João loves traditional Portuguese ingredients and… homeless cats. Our enthusiasm for simple but real food, organic ingredients and good wines, led us to share these pleasures with as many people as possible!